Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Brazil­ian Pres­i­dent Luiz In­á­cio Lu­la da Sil­va took is­sue with the Unit­ed States' mil­i­tary pres­ence in the re­gion when he spoke at a BRICS vir­tu­al sum­mit called by Brazil on Mon­day.

The BRICS in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion com­pris­es Brazil, Rus­sia, In­dia, Chi­na, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, In­done­sia, Iran and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

Lu­la deemed the US mil­i­tary buildup in the Caribbean, as "a source of strain that could un­der­mine peace in the re­gion."

"The pres­ence of armed forces from the world’s largest pow­er in the Caribbean Sea is a fac­tor of ten­sion in­com­pat­i­ble with the re­gion’s vo­ca­tion for peace,” Lu­la added.

He stressed that Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean have been a re­gion of peace since 1968, when the Treaty of Tlatelol­co was signed, ban­ning the use of nu­clear weapons in the re­gion.

Lu­la la­belled the US ac­tion as a form of "tar­iff black­mail," re­fer­ring to the tar­iffs the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has placed on goods ex­port­ed to the US. Since then, Lu­la had stepped up con­tacts with his BRICS part­ners, es­pe­cial­ly Chi­na, Rus­sia and In­dia.

Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping al­so ad­dressed the BRICS sum­mit vir­tu­al­ly, urg­ing more co-op­er­a­tion in var­i­ous ar­eas.

Lu­la urged BRICS mem­bers to con­tin­ue de­fend­ing mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism “with one voice” in in­ter­na­tion­al fo­rums, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the UN. He said uni­lat­er­al­ism "will not lead us to achieve the goals of jus­tice and pros­per­i­ty.” He called for BRICS to sup­port Brazil’s ef­forts to push for ex­pan­sion of the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil - a long-stand­ing as­pi­ra­tion of Brazil's.

The BRICS Sum­mit arose af­ter lead­ers from Chi­na, Rus­sia, In­dia and oth­er Eurasian na­tions gath­ered in Chi­na last week, pre­sent­ing a vi­sion of a new in­ter­na­tion­al or­der.